Intricate beauty of a cracked glass

Typical crack speeds in glass easily surpass a kilometer per second, and broken surface features may be well smaller than a millimeter, so the processes that generate these patterns have been largely a mystery. Now, by replacing hard glass with soft bu...

Typical crack speeds in glass easily surpass a kilometer per second, and broken surface features may be well smaller than a millimeter, so the processes that generate these patterns have been largely a mystery. Now, by replacing hard glass with soft but brittle gels, researchers have slowed down the cracks that precipitate fracture to mere meters per second, and unraveled the complex physical processes that take place during fracture in microscopic detail and in real time.